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Survey: Cloud monitoring, management tools come up short

Three out of four network managers say that at least one of their
network monitoring tools has failed to address their requirements
for monitoring the public cloud environments – perilous, given
the extent of public-cloud adoption today.

Overall, only 26 percent of network managers say their tools
fully addressed their cloud-monitoring needs. Thirty-nine percent
said they had to find new solutions to solve their tool gap. The
rest (35 percent) customized their tools in some way to address
the issue.

Why network monitoring tools fail in the cloud

Cost and complexity were the top reasons given for
cloud-monitoring failures. Forty-five percent said cloud support
required additional software licenses or network monitoring tool
modules, which they didn’t want to pay for. Forty-four percent
indicated that cloud support in their tools was too difficult to
implement or use. They simply couldn’t get value out of the
updated tools.

“Due to complacency and limitations of the software itself, we
had to get rid of [a tool],” one IT executive at a North American
distributor of heavy, manufactured products told EMA. “It’s not
worth the time and investment. We didn’t want to spend more money
on a new version that was just a redux of an older version. I
didn’t see any real progress in the product.”

Furthermore, 35 percent said their vendors had done a poor job of
adding cloud-monitoring support to their tools, with the
functional updates failing to meet their needs. And 28 percent
said their vendors had failed to even establish a roadmap for
cloud monitoring. Four years ago, vendor inaction in the cloud
was common, but today it’s unacceptable.

IT faces network-management-tool proliferation

The public cloud has forced 84 percent of IT organizations to
increase the number of network-management tools they use,
according to EMA’s research. Among those enterprises that have
grown their toolset, 96 percent are experiencing challenges as a
direct consequence of that growth.

First, 40 percent report they are facing a heightened security
risk because of all the tools they have deployed. There are more
administrative privileges to maintain across tools, more data to
collect, and a more diverse and sizable attack surface across
tools. As they add tools, network managers need to establish best
practices to protect the network from unauthorized administrative
access.

Twenty-six percent named cost as a major headache. They simply
have too many tools to buy and maintain. And 25 percent
complained of a skills gap. As they add tools, network managers
have to learn how to use them.

How to avoid trouble

Network managers can mitigate these problems by taking control.
They shouldn’t wait for the cloud team to come to them for help
with cloud engineering and operations. Instead, the network team
should join the cloud team at the very beginning, before the
enterprise even starts evaluating the possibilities of a cloud
strategy.

EMA’s research found that network teams that get involved with a
cloud strategy on “day zero” are the most likely (35 percent) to
report that their existing monitoring tools met all their cloud
requirements, in contrast to 18 percent of network teams that
join a cloud effort during the research or planning phase. Having
an early say in the direction of a cloud strategy will help the
network team align that strategy with existing capabilities.

Also, identify the technical requirements that the cloud might
demand of your tools as early as possible. EMA research found
that scalability is the top business requirement driving tool
strategies for managing and monitoring cloud networking. The
number-two requirement is adaptability. Network monitoring tools
must be able to support new abstractions, new cloud providers and
new network software.

It may be inevitable that some tools will let you down. And new
vendors will emerge that offer capabilities no incumbent vendor
can offer. However, EMA advises network managers work as
carefully as possible to extract value from their existing tools
to mitigate complexity and control costs.